Writer, Researcher & Cultural Historian

Category: Opera

The forgotten book in question… I’ve blogged before about using eBay as a research tool. I trawl the website frequently, looking for new material related to the singers who populate my PhD thesis. I’ve made some excellent finds, including a rare first edition which cost the princely sum of 99p! I also regularly search AbeBooks,… Continue reading A Forgotten Book

Autobiographies of nineteenth-century performers are a lot of fun to work with. They are, without exception, filled will all manner of bizarre and surprising anecdotes. In a previous post I discussed the opera singer Henry Phillips (1801-1876), who wrote about the way in which he was influenced by American Indian dance. Today I am returning… Continue reading Dragonetti & His Dolls: The Musician Who Married a Mannequin

One of the best things about working with the autobiographies of opera singers is the curious and unexpected anecdotes that you frequently come across. Today I’ve been re-reading the memoirs of Henry Phillips, a popular bass singer of the early nineteenth century. His autobiography, Musical and Personal Recollections During Half a Century, was published in… Continue reading An American Indian War Dance on the Operatic Stage in 1824